With the advent of computers and computer networks, including the Internet, massive quantities and types of data have become available to computer users. Computer users may now obtain virtually any type of data in any quantity from virtually any data source. However, the challenge is in assimilating and presenting the data obtained in a meaningful manner to the computer user.
Clearly, the types, quantities, and sources of data available to computer users are virtually without limit. However, one specific example of available data that is particularly illustrative of the type with which the present invention may be used is financial market data. Financial market data includes any and all market information, current or historical, such as the trading prices and volumes of stocks, bonds, stock funds, bond funds, market indices, commodities, commodity indices, monetary exchange rates, and any other market trading data. Investors have long had at their disposal voluminous amounts of textual and numerical financial market data. They have even been able to view such data graphically, such as with a bar graph, line diagram, or pie chart. However, such graphical displays of data still have drawbacks in that they do not necessarily convey to the investor an immediate sense of how quickly the price or volume of a particular stock may be changing or trading at any given instant. Consequently, the investor is required to perform more mental calculation than she would like in order to obtain the desired information.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,191,799 discloses the use of animated objects to overcome some of these shortcomings in the prior art. However, even when the data is graphically represented to a user using animated objects, the amount of available display area may be too limited to accommodate the simultaneous display of sufficient numbers of objects to adequately represent particularly complex or interrelated data. Moreover, the relationship of some of the data to other data may not be adequately represented using animated objects alone.